I may not have the best dates ever, but at least they're the fastest

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Monthly Archives: October 2011

I’ve known for a while that I’m too old and/or prudish to get the whole “sexting” thing. (If I want to look at a low-quality photo of a guy’s junk, I’ll use Google, thanks.) But I only recently discovered that sexting is so pervasive, it’s now expected before we’ve even met.

It started with my friend and a guy she met online. She had yet to schedule a date with this dude when one night, he texted that he was at a bar and she should be there. She naturally felt some confusion, which increased exponentially when his next text said that after drinks they should go sit on his couch for kisses and cuddles.

And then, as my friend reports, it only got weirder.

“I had no idea how to respond to that, so after a few hours, I just replied and said, ‘HA!’ and he replied and said ‘LOL.’ Then, the next morning, at 9:53 am, I got this text that said ‘Hmm. Doesn’t soundlikeypou’dmind.’ I replied about 10 hours later and basically said yes, I do mind, because he was a stranger from the internet.

So, he decided to try and smooth things over by saying he had a couple too many drinks the night before, he was a knucklehead, and felt bad. Then, a few minutes later when I didn’t reply he wrote again and said that the truth was that the text was not meant for me. ‘I was being flirty with someone I know. I meant to send it to them, but responded to you instead.’

However, there are several problems with this… I don’t even really know which text he didn’t mean to send me. I guess the first one saying I should be at the bar? But, that means he’s trying to claim that he sent several texts that were not meant for me. And, why the crazy, drunken-style text at 9:53 am?”

It was all pretty mysterious, but I was writing him off as one random nutso, until a similar thing happened to me. I had been texting with a guy I met online– me trying to set up a date, him engaging in the meaningless texting that single men seem inexplicably fond of these days (If someone could explain the appeal of texting things like “Wassup?” or “Wow, it’s raining really hard here” I would greatly appreciate it).

At the time of this incident, I was in bed, but I hadn’t told him that and there was nothing sexy about the situation (unless you’re turned on by a Clinton inauguration sweatshirt and sociology textbook). He was relaying boring details about his day (aren’t you supposed to save those for a relationship?) and I was responding with the texting equivalent of “uh huh,” when out of nowhere he texted, “We need to makeout.”

For a moment, I wondered if my friend and I could be dealing with the same dude. But since they have different area codes (seriously, that’s about all we knew about them) I have to conclude that there are multiple guys attempting to skip right to first base without all the hassle of meeting girls and talking to them. Where’s an umpire when you need him?

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I know that some people, unlike me, may not view their online dating as a full-fledged marketing campaign. It’s possible that they don’t even recruit a professional editor and a semi-professional dater (yes, LDB, I’m talking about you) to conduct a pre-publication review of their promotional materials profile. But a guy who emailed me recently stood out for his remarkable lack of salesmanship.

He wrote, “I wish I had something creative or witty to say but I do not…I know this is a waste of time cause you will read this and look at my profile and decide I am not up to par like majority of the women on here.”

Being the overthinker that I am, I assumed that this was some tricky reverse psychology. So I wrote back and asked if he was always so negative or only when trying to pick up girls. (Clever, right? My focus group thought so.)

He responded, “Well being positive does not help. That only works for guys who dress like some douchebag with their hair gel back wearing a Ed Hardy/Tapout shirt.”

Even my nationwide telephone survey couldn’t come up with a perky answer to that one.

SpeedDatingGirl is off celebrating Columbus by attempting some conquests of her own (two first dates in one long weekend!). To entertain you in her absence is an unsolicited response to last week’s post from SDG’s dad.

Dear [SpeedDatingGirl],

I read an interesting article in the National Geographic about what’s going on in Ullan Bator in Outer Mongolia. They’ve had terrible droughts in the countryside and many nomads have lost their herds and come to Ullan Bator in hopes of employment. They live in yurts and Gers (some kind of round, small and very flimsy dwelling) on the edges of town with no running water or sewers, and I would guess they just do their business in alleys. One enterprising former nomad set up a business where you could pay to get a hot shower. He closed down in a few months due to lack of business. I guess the outer Mongolians can’t see spending good kopeks (or whatever they have there) for something so frivolous as hot showers.

So if you meet any outer Mongolians, you probably don’t need to worry about them reacting adversely to your hygiene.

I’ve been ripping pretty hard on the single men of the internet recently, so maybe it’s time to turn the guns around and make fun of myself for a minute. When I’m checking out a new guy online, there’s an option to see the questions that we’ve answered incompatibly. In addition to discovering a depressing quantity of guys who prefer burning books to flags and are more OK with lesbians than gays, I’ve uncovered one other difference between me and the men of Philly– hygiene.

Having come to adulthood in a town where it was perfectly acceptable to hit the slopes, work, the bar, bed and work again without changing clothes, let alone bathing, seems to have left me with some permanently low cleanliness standards. Because when I answered the question about how often I shower with the “Usually daily. I skip some.” choice, I thought I was leaning in the direction of clean-freakiness. Yet, time after time, that answer is popping up as unacceptable to my potential dates.

So I was already aware of my abnormal acceptance of dirt when I went to a wedding recently (yes, I did shower before the wedding. it was a special occasion. duh.) and was seated next to a cute guy. We had been chit-chatting successfully when the food arrived, and I, with my usual seductive grace, knocked a serving spoon onto the floor. I hustled to grab the spoon within the official five-second limit, and then wiped it off. I looked up to replace the spoon on the tray and saw my neighbor staring in horror as he whisked the food out of my reach. I was mystified. Not only had I made the five seconds, but it was definitely the kind of situation where you could reasonably extend it to 10– tile floor, recently cleaned for the wedding, no furry animals in residence. And it was only a serving utensil!

I quietly placed it back on the table, resigning myself to the fact that the two of us would definitely not be spooning later.